


I Saw Something There in the Shadow

by indevan



Series: Bump In the Night - A FE3H Monsters and Supernatural AU series [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26118397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Linhardt can't help but be jealous of a certain new werewolf who is hanging around his boyfriend.  Ferdinand can't believe Edelgard won't allow him to host tea parties at their supernatural bar.  Dimitri is looking for a new, rival pack that has shown up in town.  Felix is also there!
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring, Ferdinand von Aegir/Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd
Series: Bump In the Night - A FE3H Monsters and Supernatural AU series [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823602
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	I Saw Something There in the Shadow

Linhardt thinks that they’re honestly a pretty piss poor coven of vampires. Caspar was always obsessed with horror movies. When they were children and Linhardt would stay over on the weekends, he used to run through the video stores, grabbing at different horror films. Linhardt has never liked blood--and, yes, he _does_ quite get the irony now--but in the movies it never bothered him too, too badly. Those movies, at least, showed him how vampires were _supposed_ to act.

But maybe it isn’t their fault. Edelgard, who made the rest of them, has been a vampire the longest and she’s only been one for a little over a year. From what Linhardt understands, her uncle forced the transformation on her. She turned Hubert next, of course, followed by Ferdinand. She says she turned someone before Caspar, but hasn’t said who. Caspar was next and Linhardt, with his aversion to blood, had resisted. Edelgard hadn’t forced him just as she didn’t force any of them to be vampires. She simply offered a choice. Hubert would walk over hot coals for her. Ferdinand would never let her outdo him, and the super strength and enhanced senses that came with the change would allow him a more equal playing field. Caspar, horror freak, of course jumped at the chance. Linhardt had remained the only human, offering his blood to Caspar so long as he looked away when his boyfriend sank his fangs into his wrist.

Apparently, though, being a willing blood donor coupled with his diagnosed anemia and low blood pressure was a “bad combination,” and he grew weaker and weaker until he eventually just agreed to be turned. Keeping a vampire’s schedule with Caspar when he was still human was growing tiresome, anyway.

Of course now it means Linhardt has to _work._ He thinks a bar where all manner of supernatural creatures work and hang out is a bit on the nose, but he also supposes that if it works, it works. Linhardt has never seen the owner...or owners. He isn’t quite sure who or _what_ Byleth is but they’re one or two people who speak in an eerie echo of one another. Linhard tries to avoid them whenever possible, even on nights where he works.

Tonight is not one such night, but he’s at the bar because he has little else to do. And he almost wishes that he hadn’t come.

“Who is _that?”_

Linhardt glares from his spot at the bar towards the DJ booth where Caspar is still setting up. Or, rather, where he _would_ be setting up if some freckle-faced shithead wasn’t talking him up. The guy isn’t bad looking but he doesn’t like the way he’s leaning against the booth with his hips, his hands loosely holding his upper arms as he and Caspar talk.

Hubert stills from where he’s wiping down glasses and a nearly imperceptible smirk flickers to his face.

“Ah, he is an interesting one.”

“Is he?”

Linhardt turns back to his drink. Apparently, over the centuries, he’ll lose the ability to imbibe anything but blood, but considering he’s been a vampire for all of two months, he figures that he’s got some time.

“He is the one Edelgard told us about.”

He raises his eyebrows. _Him?_ Edelgard had been in contact with her stepbrother--and Linhardt can only imagine the sitcom levels of hilarity that are the result of a blended family of vampires and werewolves--and the fact that apparently werewolves, who are supposed to only be born, _can_ in fact turn people. Poor Felix Fraldarius. Or, rather, that’s what Linhardt would think if he wasn’t such an insufferable asshole most of the time.

“Ashe Ubert-Gaspard,” Hubert continues. “He works at the same bookstore as Bernadetta.”

_Ah, there it is._

Hubert can deny it all he likes, but he certainly has a crush on the bookseller whose life he saved a couple months back. He wears the embroidered flower she gave him every day, after all.

“Why is this baby werewolf talking to my boyfriend?” Linhardt demands and then seals his mouth shut.

Another smirk courtesy of Hubert before the other man floats down the bar to get someone’s drink order. Linhardt frowns into his own drink. He had gotten a whiskey ginger because it’s Caspar’s favorite drink and he had ordered for them both before snatching his cup and running to the DJ booth. Linhardt likes it well enough that he has no complaints, but now he doesn’t feel like drinking it.

It isn’t that Linhardt doesn’t trust Caspar. He’s known him almost his entire life and will, apparently, know him for eternity now that they’re both immortal. He even trusted Caspar enough to let him feed without bleeding him dry back when he was still a human.

But he doesn’t know this _Ashe_ and his instinct says not to trust him. He isn’t sure of the exact circumstances but Ashe just _was turned_ into a werewolf? Linhardt feels like it’s more than a little suspicious.

This suspicion and lack of trust certainly doesn’t have anything to do with how much he’s been chatting up Caspar.

Lucky for Linhardt, Ashe doesn’t stay for long after the busiest part of the night starts. Felix comes stomping through the front door, shoves his way through the dancing bodies on the small dance floor, and seizes Ashe by his arm. Linhardt, perched on his bar stool, has a perfect view of the whole thing. They have a wordless conversation, telegraphing only barely with their eyes, and then they both leave. If Linhardt cared more, he would wonder what the deal is, but as it stands, it just means that Ashe can’t flirt with his boyfriend anymore.

With him gone, Caspar gets back to setting up. Linhardt takes the opportunity to get up and take his drink with him over to the DJ booth.

“Hey, Lin!” he says brightly upon his approach.

Vampirism made no major change in their features unless they willed it to, so Caspar’s toothy grin looked just as it had their entire lives. When he was vamped out, it was nearly frightening, but now Linhardt shared that red-eyed, fanged visage. He still isn’t used to it on either of their faces, so he is quite glad that it isn’t a permanent thing.

“Do you want the rest of my drink?”

Caspar nods and he hands it over.

“What did that guy want?” he asks, watching the column of Caspar’s neck as he drinks.

Linhardt leans against the DJ booth with one shoulder, trying to look nonchalant and not at all bothered--which he wasn’t. Bothered. Not at all.

“Who? Ashe? Just saying hi. He’s new to this supernatural stuff so he’s trying to make friends.” Linhardt’s facial expression must change because Caspar frowns a bit. “Liiiiin. C’mon. He’s nice.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“Are you jealous?”

Caspar is one of the most oblivious people he’s ever met. Except when he isn’t. Linhardt sighs a bit too loudly.

“I’m _not_ jealous. I trust you.”

That’s enough to make Caspar tip his head to the side and broaden his grin.

“Okay, then. Be nice to him next time he comes in. Ashe is a bit overwhelmed by the whole werewolf thing.”

Linhardt makes no such promise and he’s about to say so, when his sharp ears pick up a strangled cry. He turns just in time to see Ferdinand bolt across the dance floor and out the door.

“What’s that about?” Caspar wonders aloud.

Truthfully, Ferdinand has a tendency to be woefully dramatic, so Linhardt doesn’t think too much of it. Edelgard steps out of the back room and directs her gaze on them.

“Caspar,” she says in a tone that brooks no disagreement. “Music, please.”

He gives her a laconic salute.

“You got it!”

Linhardt doesn’t have the chance to move before loud synth music begins assaulting his ears.

\--

Ferdinand knows that he’s being overdramatic but part of him doesn’t care. He sits outside on the cold curb and cries. He also knows that it’s foolish to cry over a silly disagreement. The tears are more from frustration than anything else. Edelgard _still_ not taking any of his suggestions seriously. What was so _wrong_ with having nighttime tea party nights at the bar? She didn’t have to make him feel so small about whatever he suggested.

Worse is the fact that vampires cannot cry like normal humans. No, he has to cry _blood._ Ferdinand now has to worry about tears and staining his clothes. He sniffles through his nose and looks up at the buzzing streetlight above him. He sighs. He ought to put himself back together, go inside, and apologize for making a scene. He looks across the street at the darkened storefront and then past it towards the Woods. A shiver works up his spine. Whatever shadow beasts come to plague on normal people out past curfew seem not to mind Ferdinand and his kind. That is a relief because he doesn’t think he can handle being menaced by a shadow demon in addition to being embarrassed.

A shadow moves somewhere down the street. Other than the streetlights and the neon sign of Dark Side, the street is pitch black, but no amount of darkness matters to his eyes. Coming towards him, he makes out the shape of a werewolf. According to Edelgard, their quadruped wolf form was almost exclusively seen on full moons. They had a nearly human visage that almost resembled how their coven looked while vamped out, and then a more common, midway form.

The werewolf before him is remarkably tall and he can still see nearly human musculature under the fur. It walks on two legs and has a completely lupine head. The fur is a light tawny, almost golden color that Ferdinand’s keen nightvision is able to pick up. The werewolf cocks its head to the side curiously while looking at him. Its right eye is missing, he notices, and he wonders how it could have happened since, from what he can recall, werewolves heal the same way that vampires do.

In any event, the eye clues him in to who this is: Edelgard’s stepbrother, Dimitri.

Dimitri leans over to place his clawed, humanoid hands on the ground and leans towards him. His snout is remarkably close to Ferdinand’s nose and, again, he shivers, but he thinks this time that it’s for a different reason. After a moment, Dimitri’s tongue comes out to lick the tracks of blood staining Ferdinand’s cheeks. He isn’t sure how to react to that, but Dimitri seems to realize his behavior because he springs back.

As he does, Ferdinand can see the transformation begin to reverse. He stays mostly the same size, but the fur recedes and his wolfen head slowly becomes human. Out of politeness, Ferdinand looks away at his nudity.

“I’m so sorry, Ferdinand,” he says. “I reacted on instinct without thinking. My deepest, deepest apologies. Ah. Give me a moment.”

With his eyes closed, he can only hear Dimitri walk past him into the alleyway. He hears the door on the side of the bar open and close. After a couple moments, it reopens and Dimitri returns wearing a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. His feet are still bare, but he did manage to find an eye patch. The sight of clothing doesn’t surprise him. Byleth, at Edelgard’s suggestion, keeps spare clothes in the accounting office for the bar for her stepbrother and his pack.

“It is quite alright,” Ferdinand tells him. “I understand instinct.”

“May I sit with you?”

He isn’t sure why, but he nods. Dimitri sits next to him on the curb and it strikes Ferdinand that he is actually quite handsome. Especially bathed in the neon lights of the bar as he is.

“Why were you out?” he asks rather than voice this.

It isn’t right, after all, to simply comment on someone’s appearance. Even if they did lick blood off your face.

Dimitri’s good eye looks to the side.

“Well. El already knows so I don’t see the issue in telling you. There’s another pack of werewolves in town.”

“There’s what?”

Dimitri nods.

“They live out in the Woods.”

At the mention of the Woods, Ferdinand shivers again. Even creatures such as them avoid the Woods. He can’t imagine what a rival pack of werewolves would be like that _lives_ there.

“We don’t know what to expect from them, so I was doing a lap of the town to make sure they don’t try anything,” he explains.

It makes sense. Dimitri hasn’t asked why he was crying, but he’s glad. His petty little tiff with Edelgard seems so trivial now after hearing Dimitri dealing with real problems.

“How many are there?” he asks.

“Judging by their howls, only four.”

Four sounds so small, but their coven of vampires only has five members so maybe they aren’t ones to talk. Edelgard certainly doesn’t include her uncle in it to make it an even six.

“Would you like to come inside?” Ferdinand asks. He knows he has to go back in, to save his dignity if nothing else.

Dimitri shakes his head. “No, no. I’m not even wearing shoes. Thank you for the offer, though.”

“Of course.”

He rises to his feet and offers a hand to Ferdinand. It’s warm and solid and it makes him feel like blushing--if he still could--for some reason.

“Good luck,” he tells him. “With this other pack.”

Dimitri nods. “Thank you.”

“Be careful.”

Ferdinand doesn’t know why he’s still talking.

“I will. Thank you--ah, that is, thank you again.”

Dimitri smiles and Ferdinand smiles back. He realizes that he’s still holding his hand, but he doesn’t pull away. Not just yet.

\--

Linhardt shuffles back towards his apartment building alone. Even after Ashe left, he didn’t feel like partying. He just wants to sleep, quite honestly, even if dawn is still hours away. He’s also somewhat embarrassed at how much this is bothering him. He loves Caspar and he truly _is_ just looking out for someone new.

He turns the corner onto their street where the converted hotel he and Caspar call home waits in the darkness. Linhardt notices, then, a werewolf hunched over outside the door to his building. He sighs, figuring it to be Felix. He knows that sometimes, when Sylvain is taking too long in the shower, he often transforms just to have an excuse to pee outside without anyone questioning it.

The werewolf stands up just as Linhardt is about to open his mouth to voice his complaint and the words die in his throat. This werewolf is far taller and larger than Felix. Linhardt takes a step back and, without meaning to, feels himself vamp out. It’s like his body knows something his head doesn’t. He hopes that it isn’t a fight.

“Oh shit,” the werewolf says in a growling voice. “Didn’t catch that you were a fucking vampire.”

Everyone in Dimitri’s pack knows everyone in their coven. Who _is_ this?

The big werewolf takes a step towards him and Linhardt plants both feet on the ground.

_No! No, you miserable fucking vampire instincts! Run! Turn into a bat or something!_

Linhardt knows he can’t turn into a bat or mist or a wolf or anything fun. Instead he just stands there, apparently ready to do battle with this nearly seven foot tall werewolf.

Before anything can happen, two other werewolves join in in their nearly human forms. One he recognizes as Felix and the other…is Ashe. Linhardt groans, despite the situation.

“Don’t want no trouble,” the big werewolf says.

“Get out,” Felix growls.

That’s apparently enough to get him to run back towards the Woods. Linhardt watches his shape disappear and it isn’t until it’s gone does he retract his fangs and allow his features to right themselves.

“Are you alright?” Ashe asks.

He is and he isn’t. Linhardt realizes, with a slight measure of distaste, that he supposes that he _owes_ Ashe now.


End file.
